Protesters shout slogans against U.S. President Donald Trump during a demonstration in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)

Carlos Garcia

Jan 9, 2018 11:53 pm

A federal judge in California has ordered against the Trump administration, saying that it must now reinstitute former President Barack Obama’s DACA program, which granted amnesty to some illegal immigrants from deportation.

What was the order against the Trump administration?

San Francisco-based U.S. District Court judge William Alsup said that the Trump administration has to implement the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but can exclude the enrollment of new applicants who had not enrolled before.

Trump had said that he would end DACA after six months in order to give Congress enough time to pass legislation to provide protections for the DACA recipients, also known as “Dreamers.”

Alsup said that the rescission of DACA by Attorney General Jeff Sessions was based on the “flawed legal premise” that the Obama administration did not have the authority to provide the quasi-legal status they were granting to illegal immigrants.

The judge ordered that the Trump administration must continue the program as litigation opposing his action proceeds.

What is DACA?

After Congress failed to pass any legislation to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants who had been brought into the country as children, Obama implented an administrative program in 2012 that said he would grant “deferrals” against deportation.

Critics, including Trump, have said that he didn’t have the constitutional authority to grant such amnesty without an act of Congress.